I
served as a Peace Corps volunteer from 1996 to 1998 in Bukhara, Uzbekistan.
Here are some of my memories of that time:

I was assigned to live and work as a university English instructor in
Bukhara, one of Uzbekistan's treasured historical cities. At Bukhara State
University, I taught many groups of English majors in conversational practice
and was surprised at the students' high level of fluency despite the lack
of textbooks, functional chalkboards, or even chalk itself at times.

A typical evening for me at home after teaching was spent washing my
clothes by handif there was enough water pressure that dayand
cooking my mealsif there was enough gas to light a flame on my stove.
Tuning my portable short-wave radio to English language programming also
kept my mind occupied when I ran out of reading material.

My host mother and father were a retired couple who loved tutoring me
in Russian and Uzbek. With a pot of tea between us, we would talk about
the day's events while they pointed out my incorrect Russian verb conjugations.

Having toured the Old City a couple of times, I began to see the beautiful
monuments less and felt instead the dust in my nose and the hot wind irritating
my skin. The adventurous spirit with which I had approached the local
rice dish prepared with cottonseed oil was replaced by dancing visions
of a pizza and a Coke.

I will always fondly recall my Peace Corps days in Bukhara. I value
the personal relationships I made there with my students, colleagues,
and neighbors. Having lived outside America for more than two years, I
gained a new perspective on our culture and political system. I learned
a lot of things from my experiences that probably will take the rest of
my life to fully appreciate.